Creating user interfaces for business processes

In IBM® Business Process Manager, human services provide the logic and user interface through which users can view and interact with business processes, cases, data or process instances.

Client-side human services, introduced with IBM Business Process Manager V8.5.5, provide a lightweight alternative to the earlier human services in IBM BPM versions before V8.5.5. The earlier human services are now referred to as heritage human services. For more information, see Client-side human services and Difference between client-side human services and heritage human services.

Human services use coaches to build the web pages that users see. Coaches are composed from user interface controls called coach views. You can create coach views in Process Designer. For information, see Coaches and Coach views. Heritage coaches, used only in heritage human services, are composed from a fixed set of user interfaces controls. They are primarily for compatibility with IBM Business Process Manager before version 8.0. For processes created with IBM Business Process Manager version 8.5 5.0 and later, web-based coaches are recommended.

Human services provide two types of user interfaces: task completion and dashboards. A task completion user interface implements a specific activity within a process instance. It has access to the details of that process instance. A dashboard is a stand-alone user interface that users can run at any time. Users can access dashboards through the Process Portal. For information about dashboards, see Dashboards in Process Portal. With heritage human services, you can also use a coach-based dashboard as a WebSphere® portlet. For information, see Generating portlets for heritage human services exposed as dashboards.